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Why Canada Defends Ukrainian Fascism
Why Canada Defends Ukrainian Fascism
Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral “peace keeper”, pursuing a so-called policy of “multilateralism” and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left. Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism, especially in Québec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite—Liberal or Conservative did not matter—was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Québec French public opinion under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman’s club or kept more discrete by people who did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.
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Lament for Canada
Lament for Canada
I immigrated to Canada in 1967, not quite fifty-one years ago. At the time I was young, naïve and did not know much. Well, I knew a little since I was caught up in 1960s America, then roiled with opposition to segregation and Jim Crow and to the US war of aggression in Southeast Asia. Americans did not call it that of course; for them it was the “Vietnam War”. I walked on the last day of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. We travelled in a train from Washington, DC to Montgomery and back, with the shades drawn, so crackers would not have good targets to shoot at. It was the year after Ku Klux Klansmen murdered Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. It was dangerous to be black in America, and it still is. It was dangerous too for naïve young whites to stick their nose into business that did not concern them. But of course when you are young, you don’t see the danger, or think that it could come looking for you. Death was still a rather abstract thing. Then we “graduated”, so to speak, to opposition to “the Vietnam War”. That was more personal because you had to decide whether—and I put this politely—you were going to fight in a war in which you did not believe.
It was the year after Ku Klux Klansmen murdered Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi
I headed to Canada. At the time it was a pretty quiet place compared to the United States. Sure, there was Expo ’67, and there were demonstrations and campus sit-ins for this and against that. Many Canadians opposed the US war of aggression in Southeast Asia, and I remember there was an underground railway to help deserters and “resisters”, or “draft dodgers” (if you did not like them), get into Canada.
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Has the American Hegemon Gone Rogue?
Has the American Hegemon Gone Rogue?
During the US electoral campaign last year people of various political convictions feared that the election of Hillary Clinton as US president might lead to a military confrontation with the Russian Federation. On the other hand, Donald Trump declared that better relations with Russia appeared to him to be in US interests. That’s the way it seemed during the electoral campaign. But you know, in the west, candidates will say a lot of things to get elected before settling into the business as usual of their predecessors. The Deep State does not allow transient politicians to make big changes which harm its interests. So Trump came into power making promises to try to improve US-Russian relations only to pursue the “same ol’, same on” policies of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump did eventually meet with President Vladimir Putin for lengthy talks at the G20 summit in Germany during the summer, and the feedback afterward was positive
This was what Obama intended for he did as much as he could to tie Trump’s hands, expelling, gratuitously it appears in December 2016, Russian diplomats and confiscating Russian diplomatic properties. President Trump said he was going to “clean out the swamp” in Washington, and instead “the swamp” sucked him in up to the ears. As might have been expected, neocons quickly highjacked his presidency. Virtually the entire team he brought into the White House with him is already gone. The first to be targeted was retired General Michael Flynn who lasted only a few weeks. He was forced to resign because of allegations that he had conducted inappropriate discussions with the Russian ambassador in Washington. Mr. Trump did eventually meet with President Vladimir Putin for lengthy talks at the G20 summit in Germany during the summer, and the feedback afterward was positive. But once Trump returned to Washington, he was quickly brought back into line. He had to sign a Congressional bill imposing even moresanctions on Russia.
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